Luxury Automakers’ Next Gambit: Making Millions Off Your Designs

Lamborghini, Bugatti, Aston Martin, and Rolls-Royce have different strategies for rare or one-of-a-kind, multimillion-dollar supercars. But they’re each taking a shot at a growing market where, when it comes to price, the sky’s the limit. 

This past November, Lamborghini announced that it had created a single car in collaboration with one favored, unnamed customer.

The exact value of the one-off Lamborghini SC18 Alston has not emerged, though in an interview with Lamborghini technical director Maurizio Reggiani in his Sant'Agata Bolognese office, he teased that it hovers somewhere between $1 and $13 million dollars, the cost of Bugatti’s recent La Voiture Noire.  Price eliding aside, Reggiani is very clear on one thing: He claims Lamborghini started what is a growing (or—depending on how you look at automotive history—re-emerging) trend of making extraordinarily expensive, street legal, one-off supercars. The SC18, for instance, was created “in synergy” with the customer and Centro Stile Lamborghini division. In short, head designer Mitja Borkert sat down with the longtime Lamborghini client, and they drew up the 770-horsepower V12 car.